Bach'ing It

Last month I went up to Seattle for a few days with my grandparents. Joosh (tm Rypinski) was not able to go due to work obligations and the substantiated rumor that we might be renting a tiny little hotel suite or 1-bedroom flat for all of us (I actually have an entire post about this, half finished, as so many things are around here, but it will have to wait). But mostly it was the whole work obligation thing.

As we were getting ready to hit the road, Grandma asked if Joosh would be okay by himself. I wasn't sure what she meant exactly, so she went on to ask if he could, you know, cook for himself, or would he (what, starve? eat cold cereal and uncooked ramen noodles for four days?) have to eat out every day. I laughed and said that no, he's very good in the kitchen, can make lots of good stuff, and even does the dishes. Don't worry, I said, he definitely knows how to fend for himself.

That's very good, she said. It's great that he can batch it.

Quoi? I was confused. Is that some sort of old-timey word for "cut it" or "make it" or slang for survival or something?

No no, she said, "bach" it, like bachelor.

Oh. Duh.

It was so cute how she said it, how matter of fact and proud she sounded: "It's great that he can bach it". The stories she then told about different husbands of various friends of hers, men who couldn't boil water for themselves, who would be utterly lost whenever their women went away, were totally hilarious. One gal received a phone call from her fella asking why the macaroni wasn't getting soft in the bowl when he microwaved it. Without water.

Grandma guffawed at the ineptitude of these many sorry saps and their poor beleaguered wives, and talked about Grandpa's cooking and that it's so important to know how to take care of yourself, etc etc. It was a surprisingly lengthy sermon on the independence mountain, I must say. But very cute.

Well as proud of J as she was (and me, by virtue of having chosen such an apparent rarity), let me tell you, she would be absolutely appalled at me this week. J is in the VTA and I am, ahem, Bach'ing It Up here in Bridgetown. And I am disgusting. First of all this whole working at home thing is awesome, but the utter busyness of late and the lack of anyone to make fun of me for wearing my pj's all day means that I am doing just that. Second, I'm never so much into doing dishes on the slowest of days, so those are piling up rather nastily (especially since my "dishwashing" usually consists of filling the basin with hot water and soap to pre-soak the intended washees, but then totally forgetting about it until the next day when what is left is a chilly, unsoapy, crud-filled, scum-surfaced pond of yuck in the sink that I usually can't bear to attack for at least another day). Also, I put a fan in the window of the living room that at some point blew hard enough (apparently of its own accord) to scatter a bunch of receipts and loose mail from the coffee table (also known as My Office) all over the living room. That was Wednesday. The fan is still on. The scattered items are still that, but perhaps more widely spread around the room.

I ate rice pudding for breakfast. I haven't had coffee in days. My main meal today was chips, black beans with garlic (god, do I admit this? that were still on the stove from the night before.... don't judge) and mango salsa. People, it's bad.

I've decided that it's really not me, it's work - I'm stressing about a project that is going to go live two weeks from today (and will involve my flying to Iowa for two days after Labor Day to train call-center answerers, how random is that?) and not only are there a million little pieces to take care of/keep track of, I just can't seem to let go of all the loose threads and dangly bits hanging out here and there not getting done by others or Indians (ah, outsourcing), and all over which I have absolutely no control. It really could be work. But in my heart of hearts, I know that really it's because I'm just not very good at bach'ing it anymore.

Don't tell Grandma.

Am and Gram at the (gorgeous) Japanese Garden in Seattle.

Out of the closet.

I've been outed. In my haste, late last night, I forgot to switch my Google login info before posting a comment on the Watsonian blog. Bexy, the eagle-eyed future lawyer, of course spotted my odd moniker immediately and, well, now the pressure is on. I thought I might get away with skulking around the whole thing a bit more, but no. I am unveiled.

It's true that I've been saying "Maybe I should throw up a blog" for, what... at least four months now, I think. And it was back in Berkeley (ought three, as I recall) that I registered my first site with the intention of writing/posting something - anything - up on the bare white background. But again, no. Didn't happen. I was bested by the intimidating "Coming Soon" which taunted me, mockingly marring the nothingness. That particular domain expired by the time I'd been in Ventura several months and really didn't have much to say that didn't involve my nutball family relations or untellable gossip about old friends and former co-workers (CBTL5, I'm looking at you!).

But with Bextravagant taking the plunge, my interest was renewed, and my natural laziness toward invested creative endeavors started to abate. Plus I live in a pretty kick-ass town, so perhaps, just maybe, I thought, there would be a few more interesting things to write about than the non-stop back-brain chatter of my so-called "rich inner life" and the tragedy of near-Shakespearean proportions that had been unfolding in my work and personal life since my naive naive naive attempt to work with my crazypants family (PDX contingent).

The clincher, really, has been getting to keep tabs on what Bex was up to without our (now infamous in my household) marathon phone calls*. The daily treat of her various newsy finds and the diligent progress posts about the literal and figurative road to law school has been so terrific, while stalking Preggers through her Beancubation period was such a treat, and that's not to mention the periodic updates from friends and friends-of-friends further afield. All of this together in the tiny, webbed, blogosphere, that it seemed like such a perfect and totally modern way (jesus, I sound like I'm 80 years old) to keep in sort-of touch, share all the random good/weird/bad/fun/completely ridiculous/possibly very boring stuff and create a medium for some community connection without e-mail bombing 25 people or having the same conversations over and over (and over and over and over), or having to create a really ugly, assultive-music-and-nasty-wall-paper MySpace page.

So I finally did it, a few nights ago, while avoiding editing some text for a client's web site. (I accomplish so much of the Non-Vital when I am procrastinating the Immediately-Needed, it's truly amazing).

And now here I am. No matter how you slice it, I am definitely late to the Blogger-ing party, but that is typical with me and all things ever considered to be interesting or cutting edge. We'll see how it goes.


*Not that I don't enjoy our 2 hour and 44 minute "chats," but they are hard to commit to in the middle of work (or school) weeks and of course, weekend schedules are such that all of a sudden it's Monday, and I've talked to my Grandma twice and my mom at least once, but somehow didn't follow through on outbound dialing of the intended 510/805/now-480 call.

Same goes for you, Three-One-Oh Jojo, but with the miracle that is IM during work hours (where were you, sweet chat software, in 1998, when I sat for 8 hours every day with nothing to do but email friends absurd quizzes at their similarly boring, brand new, I-can't-believe-I-went-to-college-for-this-shiit job and wait impatiently for the replies to try and alleviate my growing sense of oppressive doom), I feel like it's less infrequent to be able to check in with you for a status report. Too bad you don't have a blog, too. Though it occurs to me that you probably couldn't have a blog, what with all the Hollywood secrets you have been sworn to never reveal. Shame, really.